The Office for Health Gain will launch a campaign later this week to increase uptake levels of meningitis C vaccine among third-level students.
Vaccination rates up to Christmas for students throughout the State were averaging only 50 per cent. While there has been some improvement since, rates remain well below the 90 to 95 per cent needed to eradicate meningitis C.
In the South Eastern Health Board, one regional technical college reported a 90 per cent meningitis C vaccine uptake. This followed a confirmed case of meningitis in a student attending the college.
The figures in the larger colleges and universities are generally lower. In order to ascertain the reason for this the Office of Health Gain requested one of the area health boards of the Eastern Regional Health Authority to carry out a survey.
Three thousand questionnaires were distributed in one university campus in the weeks before Christmas. Of those, 1,063 questionnaires were returned: 886 students said they had already had the vaccine; 177 or 16.6 per cent did not have meningitis C protection. Of the 126 who gave a reason for not being vaccinated, 34 were either intending to get it from their own GPs during the holidays or from the student health service after Christmas. Thirteen respondents had a concern about the risk of the vaccine or were afraid of needles or the vaccine's side-effects. Four per cent had never heard about the vaccine.
Some colleges had been particularly resourceful in mounting a vaccination campaign. Students were e-mailed and text-messaged to inform them of the vaccine's availability. The key message which came back from colleges and the Union of Students in Ireland was that students were most concerned about quality-of-life issues associated with meningitis C.
As a result of this feedback a poster campaign with the message that "Meningitis C can kill you" and "within 24 hours it can leave you disabled for life" will be launched this week on all third-level campuses.
Mr Kieran Hickey, director of the Office of Health Gain, told The Irish Times: "In the older age group between 15 and 19 years of age, group C is the main cause of death from meningitis. In this age group, group C disease accounts for 80 per cent of all deaths due to meningococcal infection."
The Republic has one of the highest rates of meningococcal disease in the developed world. The incidence here is 10 times the rate of the disease in Europe and the US.
Group C meningococcal disease accounts for a third of all meningitis cases, with two groups at particular risk; young children from 0 to 4 and teenagers from 15 to 19.